Half a Million Acres Burned in Just One Day — Alaska Shatters Record For Worst June Wildfire Outbreak Ever

All throughout the mainstream media last week we heard the same myopic litany — ‘a massive wildfire outbreak ongoing in Alaska is not abnormal.’ Well, today, all pretense that there was anything normal about the 314 wildfires still raging throughout the state has gone up in a cloud of boreal forest, tundra, and thawed permafrost emitted smoke.

(Alaska Interagency Center map of currently active wildfires now burning in Alaska.)

With 42 hours left in June and with more than 300 fires still active, it’s pretty clear that the current fire season is a historic, unprecedented, record-shattering event. One that will almost certainly break the 2 million acre mark and may show double the over-all previous record burning during June of 2004. An excessive new record that is occurring in the ominous context of the hottest year in the global climate record and a vastly irresponsible dumping of 50 billion tons of heat-trapping, CO2 equivalent (of which 32 billion tons is CO2) gasses into the atmosphere through fossil fuel burning and related industry each and every year.

As Alaska burned through half a million acres of forest in just one day, a massive heatwave was also setting off extreme wildfires throughout northwest Canada. It was the same heatwave that broke new temperature records all across Washington, and the mountain west. Temperatures in places like Walla, Walla Washington hit 113 degrees Fahrenheit (45 Celsius) on Sunday — breaking the previous all time June temperature record for the day by 4 degrees (2.2 C). A pulse of heat rising off the back of a strengthening El Nino in the Pacific, running all the way up the Western Seaboard and Mountains of the US and driving deep into northwestern Canada.

(Massive plumes of smoke emitting from wildfires burning near Great Slave Lake in Northwest Territory, Canada on Sunday. For reference, bottom edge of frame is 350 miles. Image source: LANCE-MODIS.)

The added heat riled wildfires burning throughout much of the permafrost zone in Canada, pushing blazes to explosive size and dumping massive plumes of smoke into an atmosphere already heavily laden with Alaska’s brown carbon pulse. In the above LANCE-MODIS image we can see about 30 of these fires burning away near Great Slave Lake. Note that some of the fire fronts in the above image are more than 15 miles long.

Given the satellite assessment from yesterday, it appears that the same excessive heat, dryness and permafrost thaw that has set off record fires for Alaska during June is now also in play for Canada. Initial reports from Canada’ Interagency Fire Center confirm this assessment with 138 new fires erupting in just the past 24 hours alone and more than 2,250,000 acres burned for the country since the start of 2015. As a result of the excessive Arctic heat (associated with both El Nino and overall human warming) and extreme rate of new fire starts, we are at risk of seeing unpecedented wildfire conditions continuing to spread throughout this warming, vulnerable Arctic region.

UPDATE: Preliminary numbers for acres burned in Alaska, according to Interagency Center reports have been downgraded somewhat to greater than 1.6 million total acres burned. These totals are still in record range with between 200,000 to 300,000 acres burned each day. It seems, given the unprecedented number and intensity of fires now burning (currently 300) in AK that there’s some difficulty getting an accurate assessment of conditions on the ground. The downgrade is somewhat good news in light of an overall difficult and record fire season for Alaska. Will keep updating as new information becomes available.

(Please help support public, government-funded climate change resiliency efforts like those aided by various interagency fire centers within the US and Canada in addition to the critically valuable satellite tracking provided by the amazing scientific and research teams at NASA.)

202 Comments

Scary stuff, Robert.
Thanks for itemized inventory 🙂
” … about the 314 wildfires still raging throughout the state has gone up in a cloud of boreal forest, tundra, and thawed permafrost emitted smoke.”
It’s like a terra firma flora body count compliments of US Congress and a mute main stream media.

– Surprise — A 5-4 SCOTUS sides with commerce.
US commerce will trump humanity until humanity stops shopping.
Birth defects are on the wrong side of the ledger, I guess.

The Supreme Court dealt a major blow on Monday to the Obama administration’s efforts to reduce emissions of toxic mercury from coal-burning power plants, saying federal regulators failed to properly consider the costs of pollution controls.

– Gee, SOTUS. Come to the PNW, and check our mercury ledger. Bring ‘Senator Snowball’ from Oklahoma with you. He seems to like oddities and impacts. ‘Mercury’ and ‘alpine lakes’ are don’t usually end up in the same sentence. Ugh.

Olympic National Park becoming a magnet for scientific research

Tristan Baurick
5:11 PM, Mar 22, 2015
…
Pristine as the park seems, climate change is dramatically shrinking the park’s glaciers and air pollution is dropping mercury into its alpine lakes, researchers say.
…
“If you’re trying to look at human impacts, you have to have a place to compare,” he said. “We are the ‘unimpacted’ place for dozens and dozens of scientific questions.”

This was very disturbing to me when I heard about it. And this right after a Dutch court ruled that the country must cut CO2 to protect its citizens. Just another example of how our country’s policy is controlled by corporate interests and big oil/fossil fuel interests.

Jeremy

Leland Palmer

If the SCOTUS wanted to do something right, for a change, they would allow citizens and organizations to sue the oil corporations (and other fossil fuel corporations) for climate damages. Unfortunately, in American Electric Power versus the State of Connecticut, they did just the opposite, a few years ago, claiming that global warming was such a complex issue only Congress and the Executive are equipped to deal with it.

What a sick joke that is, of course. They’ve dumped the problem back into those branches of government most susceptible to politics and corruption, abrogating their constitutional responsibilities.

Steven Blaisdell

“‘The E.P.A. will have to do more homework on costs,’ said Sean Donahue, who represents environmental and public health groups that signed on to the agency’s case. ‘But I’m very confident that the final rule will be up and running and finally approved without a great deal of trouble. This is a disappointment. It’s a bump in the road, but I don’t think by any means it’s the end of this program.’
An E.P.A. spokeswoman, Melissa Harrison, said the agency intended to move forward with the rule.”

Further:
“In the meantime, companies could be forced to comply with the existing regulation. The question will go before the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which has frequently decided in favor of Mr. Obama’s E.P.A. rules.

‘Given the fact that the E.P.A. has already done a detailed cost benefit analysis justifying the rule, and the fact that the majority of the affected industries have already invested heavily in compliance, there is a good chance that the D.C. Circuit will allow the rule to remain on the books’ while the agency makes its revisions, said Patrick Parenteau, an expert on environmental law at Vermont Law School.”

– A June 26 weather oddity in NZ.
My witty phrase for today: “There’s nothing to fear but — the unexpected.”

Ice halts Queenstown flights

‘Flights in and out of Queenstown Airport were on hold this morning due to ice on the runway, in a “never seen before” snap freeze.
…
“We basically had rain first up, the rain stopped and then suddenly Queenstown was snap frozen. All that water on the runway and the roads just turned to ice.”

This morning road users in Otago were also warned of severe black ice across several roads in the area.

A US flag is seen as a commercial building burns after being ignited by the Sleepy Hollow fire in Wenatchee, Wash., Monday. Emergency officials ordered hundreds of people to leave their homes in central Washington state as a fast-moving wildfire destroyed at least nine properties and threatened businesses on Sunday. Many took refuge in shelters as the blaze ripped across 1,700 acres near the cities of Cashmere and Wenatchee in Chelan County, about 120 miles (200km) east of Seattle.
David Ryder/Reuters

WENATCHEE, Wash. (AP) – Emergency management officials have issued a “shelter in place” order after ammonia started leaking from a fruit warehouse burning in a central Washington wildfire.

Chelan County Emergency management issued the order late Monday morning for an area within half a mile to the south of the Blue Bird fruit warehouse in Wenatchee. But Washington State Patrol Trooper Darren Wright said it was unclear how many people remained in the area because they had already been advised to evacuate.

Robert In New Orleans

Yes. I don’t think much of efforts to predict areas that will be sanctuaries. Scientists didn’t predict the Pacific blob, as just one example of a host of unpredictable effects that are beginning to occur. As Robert (scribbler) has noted, we need to get off the damn fossil fuels as rapidly as feasible, rather than try to guess where 6 billion people can rush in order to be “safe” (for how long?).

Phil

Is the smoke heading towards the rest of Canada and USA or towards the Arctic with possible implications for black carbon and albedo reduction on Greenland and perhaps remaining sea ice?

The other question is what are implications for carbon or methane releases from permafrost.that is subsequently burnt? Would any emission mainly be in the form of C02 or would they be released as methane or some combination of both?

Phil

Looks line the WWB is still going strongly mirroring the previous set up with Cyclone Pam with depressions parallel to each other across either side of the equator. Some forecasts (listed on Neven’s site) indicates that it might strengthen further with MJO activity.

Also be interesting to see what happens with sea ice – both GFS and ECWMF have been providing interesting forecasts but impact on extent in particular has been slow to emerge. Will be interesting to see if/when impacts arise on the sea ice metrics (assuming that forecasts bare some closeness to reality).

Syd Bridges

What I find most alarming about this fire season is that there seems no obvious change ahead to prevent a massive acreage of the boreal forests from burning. Are we about to witness a series of days where a million acres burns in North America? For the US, I fear the 9 million acre plus years of 2006, 2007, and 2012 could be eclipsed. Certainly, there is still a large area of the West showing drought conditions in the US drought monitor and much of that area is being affected by the latest heatwave.

The image can be zoomed and panned, and the time slider on the bottom can be manipulated to see data from previous days, months, and years. Satellite data products can be added and formatted using the Layers menu in the upper left of the image.

Alaska, as you say, seems to show little if any visual improvement today, either.

It’s very scary that the continuous breaking of records every year that the Deniers were demanding as a precondition for their belief is actually happening. This is less like a statistical trend, and more like a phase shift or bifurcation point.

Leland Palmer

Hi robindatta-
I know that you’re being facetious, but your remark has got me wondering what the fate of the forests will be.

We’re in uncharted territory, with only past mass extinction events to guide us. Eventually, we may trigger the Mother of All Methane Catastrophes, and exceed even past extinction events, since the sun is a little hotter now than it was 250 million years ago, during the End Permian.

I suspect we’ll have younger less complex forests, growing fiercely by CO2 fertilization and increased atmospheric moisture, burning fiercely during increased droughts and heat waves, spreading northward as the permafrost melts. Generally, under stress, ecosystems simplify themselves to a few hardy species – varmints and weeds, so to speak. Our beautiful Amazon could easily become a desert, perhaps, but the boreal forests will likely survive, spreading northward, growing fiercely and burning, burning, burning.

I think we’ll have boreal forests of some sort until the oceans start boiling – if we dissociate the methane hydrates.

Colorado Bob

Largest freshwater lake on Earth was reduced to desert dunes in just a few hundred years

Researchers used satellite images to map abandoned shore lines around Palaeolake Mega-Chad, and analyzed sediments to calculate the age of these shore lines, producing a lake level history spanning the last 15,000 years.

Good news,Robert.
I got this post to PDX KBOO News as soon as I read it. It ‘sounded’ good, on the spot action reporting with context.
5 PM KBOO Evening News: The anchor read one complete paragraph and more. (Great anchor voice on air.)
You got two “according to robertscribler …”
The whole thing sounded very professional. Yes, indeed.
At about the 26: 30, just after Jim Hightower on the pocast:
Thanks, KBOO.
OUT

Colorado Bob

Western Canada experienced more than 600 fires over the weekend, according to territorial authorities.

Canadian provinces and territories pool their firefighting resources in these circumstances. While the NWT has requested more backup, other provinces are perceived to have a “dire need” and are first in line.

“Saskatchewan, for instance, is undergoing a series of evacuations of communities,” said Frank Lepine, the territory’s associate director of forest management. “Manitoba is pretty close to that.

“The NWT will be receiving some single resources but no more crews at this time. [But] that may change by the end of the week.”

There are 129 fires burning in the NWT, which has experienced a total of 158 fires so far this season. The 20-year average is 66 fires for this time of year.

Colorado Bob

Olsen described the conditions some of the territory’s firefighters have now been facing for many weeks, with the season not yet at its expected peak.

“When we get into these extreme types of conditions, you have to imagine a wall of flame that goes from the forest floor – all the way down into the forest floor – all the way well beyond the height of the forest trees,” said Olsen.

“It’s not unusual for flames to be in excess of 50 or 60 feet above the height of the trees. The amount of heat coming off that is pretty much enough that it could melt metal.

“You absolutely do not put people in front of that, or anywhere near that, or any direction that it’s coming from.”

Caroline

Check out the Conoco Phillips ad that is foisted upon us at the beginning of the video embedded in this Washington Post article. The juxtaposition of that ad next to the catastrophic AGW induced wildfires reveals the sheer stupidity (too mild of a word) of human behavior. Shame on the Washington Post and all media that continue to promote the burning of fossil fuels and as such the demise of life on this wondrous planet.

Tom

The drought and accompanying fires are the direct result of our fossil fuel use, as has been pointed out numerous times, but we continue along, doing the same until the oil/gas runs out or they are removed from our use. Same with nuclear energy – worst pollution on the planet (because of its longevity) – so i’m not sure we can expect better results in the future.

Mankind, despite having already exceeded the carrying capacity of the planet, continues to multiply our species at the expense of all the others we rely on for our existence, not to mention the effect on the Earth of our numbers. Fresh water is disappearing, the soil is being depleted of nutrients and soil biota, landfills are routinely bursting into flames these days, pollution is rampant, diseases of plants and animals (including us) are proliferating, and politicians are only there to extend the status quo.

Looking ahead, water shortages will continue, crops and agriculture will be severely impacted and food shortages loom in every country. This doesn’t bode well for a viable, prosperous civilization.

Thanks for your outstanding work documenting the mile markers on our trip to oblivion, Robert.

Colorado Bob

BEIJING — Four days of heavy rain have caused severe flooding in central China, killing at least 15 people and leaving 19 others missing, China’s Ministry of Civil Affairs said Tuesday.

The deaths in four provinces and one municipality were from drownings, mudslides and house collapses, the ministry said.

Up to 51.4 centimeters (20 inches) of rain fell in the eastern city of Changzhou from Friday to Monday, and water levels of rivers and lakes were dangerously high in a six-province region across the country’s central part, the ministry said.

Millions of people have been affected by the heavy rains since Friday and tens of thousands were relocated, the ministry said.

Colorado Bob

Greg

Solar prices continue to drop and a new record was just set. Austin, TX as part of their initiative for more than half of their energy in ten years to come from renewable energy just received over 1 gigawatt of bids for less than 4 cents (U.S.) per kilowatt hour. Those are the cheapest utility solar bids ever and are 20% less than just last year. They are already whining about last years contracts!

Colorado Bob

A decade ago, oil operators on the North Slope found themselves in a climate predicament. The steady warming seen since the late 1960s had cut the tundra travel season — the period when operators are able to build ice roads or send vehicles over the hard-frozen ground — by half, from about 200 days to only about 100.

‘Exceptionally intense’ conditions prompt weather alerts in Spain, Portugal and France, with elderly people and children most at risk

Several European governments have issued weather warnings as a heatwave sweeping through Portugal, Spain and France pushes temperatures above 40C (104F), raising concerns for elderly people and children.

Paris, which has activated its national heatwave emergency plan, is particularly sensitive to the risks after a European-wide heatwave in 2003 led to nearly 20,000 deaths, killing thousands of isolated elderly people in France.

Colorado Bob

Tom Skilling on Climate Disruption
Climate change deniers claim global warming stopped more than a decade ago. But WGN Chief Meteorologist Tom Skilling is here to tell us about a new study that shows NO slowdown.

Colorado Bob

The global supply of seafood is set to change substantially and many people will not be able to enjoy the same quantity and dishes in the future due to climate change and ocean acidification, according to UBC scientists.

These findings were released today in Japan by the Nereus program, an international research team led by UBC scientists and supported by the Nippon Foundation. The Nereus program was formed to study the future of the world’s oceans and seafood resources. Today it released a summary of the first phase of its research in a report titled ‘Predicting Future Ocean.’ Researchers say that the future supply of seafood will be substantially altered by climate change, overfishing and other human activities.

Colorado Bob

Big run, small fish,” is a Cordova fishermen’s rule of thumb that seems to be holding true for salmon in 2015, particularly in the areas adjacent to the Gulf of Alaska.

Workers statewide from offices of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, or ADFG, are just beginning to notice an early in-season trend of smaller-than-average fish. Throughout the state’s early season salmon fisheries, particularly sockeye and chum, fish are coming in shorter and lighter for their age.

“It’s still pretty early in the game,” said ADFG fisheries scientist Eric Volk. “That being said, fish are a little bit smaller than they usually are. It may not be a pattern this early, but we have seen declines in size-at-age.”

Even seasoned fishermen are puzzled.

“We’ve seen small fish before,” said Jerry McCune, president of both Cordova District Fishermen United and United Fishermen of Alaska. “But nothing like this.”

State workers and fishermen have been noticing drops between a half-pound and a pound in the size-at-age, which is the fish’s size relative to how many years it has spent growing in the ocean before returning to the river.

Maine Voices: Acidification toxic to fishing industry
…
For the past 300 million years, the ocean has had a pH of 8.2 on average. Today, it’s around 8.1. That change may sound small, but remember that the pH scale is logarithmic; that 0.1 units represents a change in acidity of 25 percent.

GULF OF MAINE MORE SUSCEPTIBLE

The decrease in pH, and associated decrease in carbonate ions, makes it extremely difficult for many organisms that form a calcium carbonate shell – including mussels, clams, oysters and lobsters – to grow or even survive. Decreases in pH can also directly affect animals’ basic bodily functions in a multitude of ways.

In Alaska, recent research on tanner crab and red king crab showed decreased survival and growth in low-pH water. Red king crab, when subjected to a pH of 7.5 for 95 days, died at a rate of 100 percent.

– How much is consumed in acts of gluttony rather than for gainful nutrition. At least 30% or much more by my read, and after watching Americans ‘dine’ over a sq or cu meter of seafood — usually beef steak is pushed as well.

Darden Restaurants, home to Red Lobster and Olive Garden, among other chains, is one of the largest buyers of seafood, purchasing more than 100 million pounds of it annually.

– “Early Mortality Syndrome” — how’s that for a catch-all phrase.
– “Dead?”
– “No, they just had a case of Early Mortality Syndrome. Don’t worry about it — go ahead and keep eating.”

3 Reasons to Stop Eating at Red Lobster (and Other Seafood Joints)

From filthy fish to crusty crustaceans, you may want to avoid cheap seafood at all costs.
By Jake Bobick May 16, 2014

By now you’ve probably heard about the negotiated sale of Red Lobster, a $2.1 billion deal that means the struggling chain’s 700 North American restaurants will transfer to new ownership.

The chain—formerly owned by Darden Restaurant…

Shrimp prices are on the rise thanks to a worldwide shrimp shortage, the result of a lethal disease University of Arizona researchers identified as Early Mortality Syndrome. The devastating outbreak originated in Asia, a hotspot for shrimp farming, and a supplier for many parts of the world, including the U.S. More than 90 percent of shrimp consumed in this country is imported.

In an interview with Rodale News last summer, Andy Sharpless, the head of the world’s largest ocean-advocacy nonprofit, Oceana, and author of The Perfect Protein, noted, “The world’s industrial scale commercial fishing fleets have basically overfished the oceans.
… “Want to be a responsible seafood eater? Say goodbye to shrimp forever.”

Tip for Seafood Lovers: Serious consider cutting down on your shrimp consumption. Fisherman catch wild shrimp using fine-meshed trawl nets pulled through the water. Worldwide, for one pound of fish, there’s about 5 pounds of bycatch—other species that become trapped in the nets.

…the overwhelming majority sold in U.S. restaurants is farmed, often raised in unsanitary, disease-ridden pens in other countries. And just like Americans are dealing with the threat of hard-to-kill superbug infections, salmon farmers are faced with “super lice” and other bacteria, prompting the use of more potent drugs, even ones that are banned for use in the United States.http://www.rodalesorganiclife.com/food/sale-red-lobster

Colorado Bob

Extreme weather — hotter summers and colder winters, both of which produce bigger storms — was cited by EPB’s President and CEO Harold DePriest as a reason for the rate increase, the first since 2011.

“For 15 years, I budgeted about $2 million a year for storm restoration work,” DePriest told the board at its regular business meeting. Now that’s climbed to $6 million annually — punctuated by tornado-ravaged 2011 when, he said, EPB spent $26 million fixing storm damage. Federal Emergency Management Agency funds helped offset that, he said.

Colorado Bob

More than 150 patients are still being treated in the hospital. Most of the patients are elderly and poor.Meanwhile, several areas of Balochistan are also facing very hot weather as the Met Office said on Monday that the maximum temperature of 47 degree Celsius was in Turbat and Nokkundi, 45 degree Celsius in Sibi and 42 degree Celsius in Panjgur and Lasbella.But the story is different for AJK as the first torrential rain coupled with strong winds in certain parts of the region, including Mirpur, provided a respite from the scorching heat.

Colorado Bob

An official from the Ministry of Climate Change said that earlier, environment was not a priority for the government, because of which the relevant departments lack a proper strategy to tackle any of the extreme weather events emerging across the country.

“Our weather forecast is mostly based on general perceptions and on the weather predictions of our neighbouring countries.”

Jacob

Yes, we do, but even if we get it that rain will not fill the aquifers back up. Good catch, dtlange. I don’t watch the TV news, local or otherwise, very much.

Living in the Sacramento Valley I am shocked and dismayed that people are still watering their lawns. Guess those “beautiful” green lawns are the highest priority, but it’s okay we won’t ever run out of water ….

Andy in San Diego

To make matters worse, the sinking houses in Hall’s neighborhood sit right across the street from drought-thirsty agriculture. The farmers are digging a record number of wells, deeper and deeper into the sinking water table.

“When that clay soil starts shrinking and going away, the foundation follows, especially on the older homes. We’re seeing subsidence right now at about one foot per year.”

Beautiful photo, dt. It’s a tragic beauty when you know what the reason for it is. I’m sure the future holds many enhanced sunsets as our precious forests continue to burn. Perhaps we’ll experience blood red sunsets if the madness of deniers continues to delay action, until it’s so bad those same people convince the world to commence geoengineering schemes.

Tom

The counterclockwise flow around Tropical Depression Chan-hom in combination with the clockwise flow around Tropical Cyclone Twenty-five is generating a Westerly Wind Burst (WWB) near the equator, just west of the Date Line. The winds of this WWB are predicted to march eastwards towards South America during the coming weeks, pushing more warm water eastwards that will reinforce the on-going moderate-strength El Niño event. This El Niño event is already at the borderline of being categorized as “strong”, and this new WWB could well push it past that threshold. This should make for an unusually active Eastern Pacific hurricane season, by bringing warmer waters and lower wind shear (next chance for a named storm there: in about ten days’ time, when the MJO pushes eastwards into the Eastern Pacific.) Conversely, El Niño should bring a much less active than usual Atlantic hurricane season, thanks to the high levels of wind shear that typically occur there during an El Niño.

Andy in San Diego

For anyone who’s lived in So Cal and know the area / climate (DT for sure).

Here is another signal of moisture loading in the atmosphere. The summer long term forecast for San Diego (thus OC, LA etc..) indicates extremely high humidity and lightning storms with thunderstorms inland.

Today felt like back east August humidity, we had lightning and even a brief thunderstorm (small compared to the biggies back east, but very unusual for here).

labmonkery2

I can attest to that – In Santee it’s currently 2039hrs and the measured temp in my front yard is 78.8 with humidity at 71%. Not something we’re used to seeing in June and I’ve lived here 35 years. Glad my AC is working.

Andy, back east the humidity has only gotten worse. In Ct we have many days now that resemble a sub-tropical climate typically associated with Florida and the southeast US. As someone who works outside, this has definitely not gone unnoticed by me.

Yeah, Ryan. That pretty well mirrors how I have described the PNW has come to resemble the Desert Southwest. The climate sort of marched north 12 -14 degrees of latitude in just a few years. Incredibly raped ‘real time’ climate — ‘change’ doesn’t do it justice.
It’s like being a spectator in a real life climate diorama.
I get dizzy just trying to describe it.

Colorado Bob

Andy –
You do good work , as do many here. And I love your understanding of this NASA site.
RS has best research team on the web .
The “dark snow” is grey in this shot . I think I know about where this is. Jason Box may be in this shot. Do us all a solid. Watch this patch of Greenland for the next 90 days. We all want to know what the smoke does to Greenland. Save the images and date them, do it every week when the clouds allow. If I’m right , you’ll record every bit of soot coming out of North America. And landing on Greenland. It’s just 13 pictures starting with this one.

Colorado Bob

Andy in San Diego

If you look at this satellite image from yesterday, look at the fjords where the runoff from the glaciers run out to the ocean. You will see a color change starting from the ocean front of the fjord. It runs from dark blue to blue. Then it turns teal (RGB =~ 0x00FFFF). This is suspended debris (soil). Now continue towards the glacier and the water turns light brown (sand colored). Again this is suspended particulate.

If the runoff was in a neutral state there would be an insignificant amount of the suspended particulate or it would be “teal” for a small amount. However, due to accelerating (accelerated) runoff more ground soil (wider / deeper in fluvial region to the water) is picked up and pushed into the fjord.

The brown water indicates an increase in glacial outflow as it is pulling material from new areas towards the ocean.

I’ve been watching this through the late spring forward in various regions (yeah, I’m not normal. I watch this stuff, not Kardashians).

Colorado Bob

Andy –
You do good work , as do many here. And I love your understanding of this NASA site.
RS has best research team on the web .
The “dark snow” is grey in this shot . I think I know about where this is. Jason Box may be in this shot. Do us all a solid. Watch this patch of Greenland for the next 90 days. We all want to know what the smoke does to Greenland. Save the images and date them, do it every week when the clouds allow. If I’m right , you’ll record every bit of soot coming out of North America. And landing on Greenland. It’s just 13 pictures starting with this one.

Jacob

Jeremy

My experience of glacial outflows is limited to Switzerland when in the summer spring the rivers run with a bright turquoise colour from very fine sedimentation. Could the brown colouration be due to excess melt waters tearing up the moraines that retreating glaciers leave behind and represent pulses of water coming through the internal plumbing of the ice sheet from ephemeral lakes?

Colorado Bob

Colorado Bob

When one reads the station readings from Narsarsuaq this is not an urban heat island,

Andy I worked months on these 2 facts. I watched every day . This landing of a VLJ Embraer Phenom 100 Landing at Narsarsuaq Airport in Greenland, 5 years ago is a real baseline ,
All we have do is get a Go Pro on the same approach. This month .

Andy in San Diego

I’ve flown in there a few times, 40+ years ago as a kid back when you needed a hop between Eu and N. America. It was either Greenland or Iceland at that time where you would have to stop and fuel.

Watching the video you posted one huge change I see is flora / fauna. Back then it was different. July flying into there, I saw exactly one stunted shrub. There was zero grass. It was simply rock with a snow / ice line running right near the water. Perhaps a hundred yards or 2 hundred between ice and ocean. But there was no grass, nothing green.

james cole

Not climate related, but this caught my interest today. “Scientists have discovered helium gas leaking from a huge fault line on the Earth’s crust in central Los Angeles, a sign that substantially increases the chances of the “big one” – a major earthquake that could inflict unprecedented damage on the Golden State.”

Colorado Bob

Andy in San Diego

Displacement of water in the Salton Sea contribution to the 1906 quake. Now we are displacing water & weight via drilling rigs at the speed of light. Either we are enabling the potential for an earthquake, or we are stunting it and causing further stress buildup. Either way we are actively causing an imbalance that will cause a big shaker with behaviors which may be out of the norm.

Vast amounts of groundwater have been pumped from the Central Valley, and I’m sure that has an effect on mass and pressure distribution. And let’s not forget the loss of ice mass in the Himilayas, and the recent substantial earthquakes in that region.

james cole

California is simply a disaster prone place. I still remember the mass wild fires around San Diego back when I was a sailor in training at the Fleet ASW School there. One summer the whole place went up in smoke in the surrounding hills. It was like hell had come to town.

– It looks like the 405 SD FWY is going to get a few chicanes when the roadbed meanders. (I remember when excavation for the 405 was just beginning around Culver City, around 1960?)

A chicane is an artificial feature creating extra turns in a road, used in motor racing and on streets to slow traffic for safety. For example, one form of chicane is a short, shallow S-shaped turn, requiring the driver to turn slightly left and then right again to stay on the road, which slows them down. Chicane comes from the French verb chicaner, which means “to quibble” or “to prevent justice”.[1] Wkipedia

Greg

Here’s what’s scary for me today. I started catching up on the thread and got to this point and said CB is going to post a video now! Dang if he didn’t below. I’m beginning to know you better now than my wife! Oh dear!

Colorado Bob

Carol

Thanks, CB. You always post music that really nails it! I just discovered these great Dire Straits songs in the last year (I seemed to have stopped listening to commercial music in the 80’s). Mark Knopfler is fantastic, and so much fun to play air guitar with.

Tom

Bonjour Robert
I came across a French article http://www.123ocean.com/ocean/climat-fr/plus-oxygene-terre-moins-100-ans/
It says that because of dying phytoplankton because of ocean warming and acidification, that we’ll run out of oxygen in about 100 years. Phytoplankton produces 80% of the world’s oxygen.
I’m not sure what the scientific community says about it that 100 year of oxygen left, but 40% of the phytoplankton died out already, and I know the atmosphere lost 540 ppm of oxygen since 1980…
I thought you might want to check that topic out, you have connection I don’t.
Have a nice day, but don’t hold your breath 😉

Leland Palmer

Last I heard, the atmosphere was almost 20 percent oxygen. So, significant losses will take hundreds or thousands of years. Not that the destruction of the phytoplankton won’t catch up to us, eventually.

Some of the past oceanic anoxic events were accompanied by significant drops in oxygen- the End Permian, for example. So, this one will be, too, likely.

Yvan Dutil

The author is scientifically illiterate. 19,5 % of oxygen will not make you loss consciousness! At the top of Mauna Kea the oxygen partial pressure is only 60 % of the sea level and you can still breathe.

If the reduction of the primary ocean productivity is a serious concern, suffocation by lack of oxygen is not.

Have to agree with Yvan here. The rate of loss is nowhere near enough to hit suffocation levels within 100 years, even with near total loss of phytoplankton. The study misses the real story here which is an overall decline in air quality. You add in BAU 1000 ppm CO2, lowered O2, and higher levels of other gasses and it’s just not a very friendly base atmosphere. But suffocation risk — not on the 100 year timeframe.

Leland Palmer

Hi dtlange-
I don’t think there is enough carbon in the biomass of the earth to make much of a dent in the oxygen supply through burning. I think that in order to do that, you need a much larger carbon source like the methane hydrates, or all of the other fossil fuels put together. Looking roughly at the math, and making worst case assumptions, it’s hard to get more than about a 20 percent decline in O2 levels, even adding together all of the methane hydrate carbon, the fossil fuel carbon, and the much smaller amounts of carbon in the soils and the biomass.

It looks like there is about 1000 trillion metric tons of oxygen in the atmosphere, and that’s a lot. Worst case estimates for the methane hydrate global carbon inventory are in the 75 trillion metric ton range. Even at 2 moles of oxygen to one mole of carbon to make CO2, that’s still not a huge dent.

Leland Palmer

This is from NASA worldview for Canada, yesterday. The red dots are thermal anomalies (fires). The image can be panned and zoomed, and the time controls allow looking at past data. Additional satellite data products can be added and formatted using the Layers menus in the upper left.

Greg

Amidst all the heat and smoke around here a reminder about the battle against FF. In less than 5 years we will very likely be installing more solar in the world in one year than in all of previous history combined. That’s about the total electric capacity of Europe today.

Greg

Looks like the West and Upper Western United States is getting a continued roasting into next week with temperatures in some areas 20 degrees F above normal. Thank your old friend CO2. He’s looking out for you.

Jeremy

New UK record temperature for July 36.7C (98.1F), beating the previous record by 0.2C, at Heathrow Airport London. The hottest day in the UK ever recorded was 38.5C on 10th August 2003 in Faversham, Kent.

Ironically the same day that a government report is issued saying that another runway should be built at Heathrow. Obviously not enough of a record for our right wing government.

Greg

One more innovation in the solar space. This one, of all people, comes from James Cameron, director, innovator and green guy. I think this might really catch on as it tracks the sun and is artistic and he’s open sourcing it. This is an installation at the MUSE school in California:

Robert In New Orleans

With all of the combustion particulates floating about in the air, this has to be tough on people with asthma, emphysema, allergies, bronchitis, and COPD. I would expect to see a spike in emergency room visits, and sudden deaths.

labmonkery2

Also to note: at weather.com and within their interactive weather maps, there is a fire map, too. It does reflect most named fires as currently discussed. But what amazed me was west central Africa and in particular Angola and southern Congo. There are so many fire icons at total zoom out that you cannot even see where you are.
So, it seems there is a lot of smoke/soot being pumped into the air column that will, in time, deposit where least needed.
The feed backs are getting worse…which is what happens when you upset an equilibrium that took billions of years to come into balance, by releasing all that sequestered carbon in less than an eye-blink on the time scale of the planet. Mother Earth is just trying to heal herself.

Heatwaves have emerged as an important hydrometeorological hazard and will remain so, given projected changes in the frequency of extreme heat events associated with human-induced climate change,” the UN text warned.

LJR

Anna

Actually 570,000 sq miles of Alaska is land, the rest is water, so the percentage of burn year to date is closer to half a percent (.5%) of total land area. Keep in mind also that the total land area includes mountain peaks covered with snow.

Andy in San Diego

There are 5,400,000 acres of old growth boreal forest in Alaska. 5400000ac -1ft²= 8437.500mi². That is 8,500 square miles (rounding up) of Boreal forest in Alaska.

But looking for truth, one must say how much is in peat, or other terrain. And Alaska include a HUGE amount of non-forest areas (glacier, above treeline, swamp, rock plains etc..).

If this is occurring in the Boreal forest alone, it would be 17% of the total size. But it’s not. And I won’t be a cherry picking asshole to pretend all of Alaska is represented in that value. The percentage is lower as non boreal forest is now burning.

Sorry, simply stating the entire size of Alaska and calculating a non correlating value to it and coming up with 0.2 means jack shit. I can hear the analysis crying due to abuse.

Give us a real number, based on real research. Factor out non burnable areas etc…

Sorry for being a bit of a dick here, but what you just posted is rubbish.

Greg

Have lost count of how many millions in Brazil are now effectively under water rationing (simply having water cut off seemingly randomly) and are facing extreme rationing later this year. Now the Paraopeba System is headed that way which includes another 2 million plus. “We have a very serious crisis in the reservoirs”:

Greg

Texas needs the attitude of some in Brazil, “In various towns of Navarre, prayers petitioned Saint Peter to grant rain in time of drought. If the rain was not forthcoming, the statue of St Peter was removed from the church and tossed into a river.”

Colorado Bob

“June 2015 was the hottest June since 1891 when records began. Daytime temperatures exceeded 40 degrees Celsius in the shade 16 times,” a spokeswoman at Turkmenistan’s state meteorological service in the capital Ashgabat told AFP Wednesday.

She noted that Tuesday, when temperatures reached 47.2 degrees celsius, was the hottest June day in Ashgabat in the recorded history of the energy-rich country.

Aldous

“The report is a product of the Nippon Foundation – UBC Nereus Program. It notes that continued CO2 emissions are leading to changes in ocean temperature, acidity and oxygen levels that have been unprecedented over the last several thousand years. These changes in ocean conditions will affect biological productivity in the ocean, impacting organisms ranging from plankton to fishes. Along with overfishing and habitat destruction, climate change is anticipated to lead to a decline in fisheries in many regions and alterations of marine biodiversity and food web structure.

Dr. Sasakawa, the chairman of the Nippon Foundation, said that “We are at a critical point. If no effective measures are taken against the current problems facing the oceanic environment, human beings will no longer be able to sustain its economic activities, much less its existence.””

Colorado Bob

Coastal Alaska natives face ‘some of the highest shoreline erosion in the world’

They already knew climate change was changing their lives for the worse.

The ice the Iñupiat people used for centuries to hunt bowhead whales on a fragile barrier island on the Chukchi Sea had thinned so much that hunting was too risky. Ice melted by high temperatures from climate change made flooding part of their way of life. State and federal officials have seriously considered moving their entire village inland. But no one had a full assessment of the threat.

Fireworks are a beloved tradition of the Fourth of July, but the colorful displays also bring a spike in air pollution, a new study shows.

The researchers analyzed information from more than 300 air-quality monitoring sites throughout the United States, from 1999 to 2013. The researchers looked at levels of so-called fine particulate matter — tiny particles that can get deep into the lungs, and are linked with a number of health problems.

The study found that average concentrations of fine particulate matter, taken over a 24-hour period, are 42 percent greater on July Fourth, compared with the few days before and after the holiday.

Colorado Bob

Hong Kong’s record heat likely to stay on the boil after hottest June in a century

Hong Kong last month experienced its hottest June since records began more than a century ago – and the city can expect hotter-than-usual weather for the next two months.

The average mean temperature last month hit a scorching 29.7 degrees Celsius, the highest since records began in 1885. That is 1.8 degrees higher than the June average of 27.9 degrees, figures from the Hong Kong Observatory show

Colorado Bob

Hot and dry conditions in Alaska have been toppling records over the past few months — many of which have been held for decades. And now, with two million acres burned already, 2015 appears well on its way to becoming the worst fire season on record for the state.

Colorado Bob

In 2009, a multi-author study published in Science found that forest fires have a “substantial positive feedback on the climate system” — that the burning of forests releases carbon into the atmosphere, hastening climate change, which in turn impacts wildfire season.